i ******* hate moving.
shoving my every belonging into boxes from lowe's,
folding,
rolling,
dust in the air.

there is never enough room.
i have too many pieces of myself and
i live closet to closet.
i try so hard to keep my feet planted,
shove them into the garden outside my window,
feel the dry mulch between my toes,
but the coat hangers attached to my shoulders
do nothing but drag.

now this house,
(this rental apartment)
felt like home.
for the first time in nineteen ******* years,
i had white walls and a window facing the street.
i had carpet that, ten years ago,
my brother and i would have ogled samples of at home depot,
running the plastic threads under our fingertips.
living in the center of town,
i would never be alone.
even if i were to wake up at 4 am, dry mouthed,
heart racing from seeing your eyes again,
the sound of car tires,
knowing that someone else existed within my reality
could make me notice your absence less.
my arms would still be grasping
at the space in my bed where you should be,
but the spot on my ribs that you held
would feel less painful tonight.

i can't stop feeling like you're this apartment,
which, as of tomorrow,
i'll be out of for good.
not in the sense that i'll never see you again,
but in the sense that i got a taste of what i've always wanted.

i'll drive by every day,
notice that the blue paint has faded
by the strength of the everyday sunshine,
but i'll still tear up
at the memory of resting within your eaves,
candles in the windowsills.

at work a few days ago,
my coworker breathed in my ear,
and my stomach dropped to my knees
at the memory of your lazy and quiet sleeping breaths.

i am detached and searching
because within every home i enter,
i scavenge for a chip of blue paint,
a messy carpet square,
a roof shingle,
fractured,
but nonetheless whole.

i search endlessly for pieces of you,
and maybe,
someday,
i could finally unpack.

my mother told me
to stop crying.

i wished i could sail away
on the the rivers of sorrow
that stemmed from my foggy eyes,
to get away from here.

but she insisted
that i would find someone
with sunshine in their eyes
to make home
a little less dark.

i remember the first night
that i could feel you in my chest.
there were five of us in the room,
but i could swear
that you only told stories to me.

now, i could feel the white-hot spotlight
on the two of us,
but it was you that turned off the switch.

the first night that i felt close to you,
we were near.
you were drunk
but we counted the lights on the ceiling
and you told me that they were stars.

the second night,
you were drunk
but we watched bob ross
until the clock on the wall gave out,
and when he painted the sunset
with his little feather brush,
i could swear he was painting my ribs.

the third night,
you were drunk
and we crept into your room.
the lava lamp was on,
we tiptoed around your roommate,
and i saw the artificial sunlight
dancing on the wall.
you held me closer
than i ever had been
and your heart beat with mine.

you held me so tightly
that i swear i could feel
you fusing my broken pieces back together
and now i can't stop grasping my chest
to feel it again.

i woke up and you were sober,
and i'll be ******
if you weren't closer to me
than when there was more beer
in your veins than blood,
our foreheads aligned.

you held me in your arms
and still liked me anyway.
you could feel my insecurities
under your ******* fingertips,
and you could still find the light
within my cumulonimbus body.

i thought that you saw the sunset
within my golden hair
that got caught in your sleeve
that first night
and i thought you were open.

here's the thing:
i didn't know your eyes were blue
until the night that i saw them closed
as you were kissing another girl.

i mistook your alcoholic flambé
as a substitute for sunlight
and i'll be ******
because i can't emerge from the smoke.

you taught me
that the sunset is blue,
even if you don't notice until the last minute,
and that once someone's fingers
are intertwined with your ribs,
it takes warmth
to get them out.

i saw the sunlight in your eyes
when nobody else did.

you saw the rays
emanating from my body
when i was sure
that i was nothing but clouds
and wind that makes your skin sting
from the cold.

and all we're left with
(all that i'm left with)
is searching for the cloud break
just one more time.

you are my new york.

i long to rest within your skyscraper heart
but the stairs are too difficult to climb.

yearning
and distant
and nonetheless unattainable.

an enigma,
a dream,
a space within my concrete chest
flooded with sparkling sewer water.

you are too much,
and i am too little.

you veins pulse with light
but i don't know how much longer
i can pay the electric bill.

i can't get close without changing.

i cannot float down the river
swim through your chest
and end up sitting on the sidewalk.

i try and i look up
but at the top of your skyscraper heart,
i am in a cloud
and i cannot see the ground
nor feel the pulse of headlights and movement.

we are unrealistic.
my arms outstretched
but in vain

i cannot be what you need.

millions live within you,
and i am one.

love is going to bed late
and waking up early.

love is the sun coming up every day
even though we give it a million reasons not to

and love is forgiving.

love is knowing that you have class in the morning
but you want to spend the night here,
near her,
so that she isn't sleeping alone.

love is vertigo in your chest.

love is knowing that it could never happen and loving her anyway.

love is when she tells you that she is straight and you can't stop looking at her mouth

and love is whole.

love is looking up to him,
and love is pride.

love is pride in yourself and other's pride in you.

love is community

and singing in the sun,
feeling the dirt in your sandals,
the guitar chords resonate in your chest.

love is spring with your best friends.

love is bright and ringing and full.

love is the tattoo on your right arm,
painful,
but the stinging will help your fractured memory
remember the love.

love is real when you can feel the absence of it.

love is real when you remember his aching words of pride
and the cave in your chest echoes.

love is real when she tells you that she slept over at his house last night
so that she didn't have to sleep alone.

love is burning,
and true,
and painfully whole.

i can't swim.
you supplied me with pool noodles
and innertubes
to where i could kick my legs
but now i'm drowning.

it's been 6 months.
6 ******* months.
and still
every time i see your welcoming embrace
i can feel my lungs fill with salt water
it burns
but i can't stop going back

i am constantly reaching for the unattainable.
i want there to be a time
when the drowning doesn't feel comfortable
but i still have yet to learn
how to hold myself up

i have never felt the weight
of forcibly forgetting the love
to drain the water in my lungs

as i sit behind this flask
i am drowning myself
but at this point
i can't find dry land

"i'm proud of you."
the twisting, brilliant tendrils of your words
are tied around my ribs

what hurt was the paralyzing sting
of the bottomless ocean of reality
drenching the bonfires
that had blinded my heart
for years, linked together
by your pouring of gasoline

our love was unromantic
and while we didn't honeymoon in venice
my blood still
pumps through smoking embers

all we have between us are memories
all we will ever have between us is memories
and the weight of my forgetful mind
will not relent in constricting my lungs

your marble column legs
held me upright
and i'll be ******
because this earthquake
lead to my collapse

a note to you:
nobody knows me here.
i am drained.
i am nobody to be proud of.

it's 10 pm.
i note the ember of your cigarette emerging among your dark porch
murmurs.
i am walking home
to my dorm with a locked door
"beautiful night tonight, huh?"
my mouth is sewn shut
and my heart is a deep, wooden drum
men are not supposed to howl,
and women are not supposed to sit idly by
at your bared, smiling teeth
i am not walking by for your entertainment.
i want that tattooed on my bones.
i have never walked so quickly
with fear at my heels
i should not have to walk alone at night
with my keys laced between my fingers
because i am afraid of the wolves.